Just over twenty years ago, CNN was a very small fish amongst the Big Three American television networks of CBS, ABC, and NBC. The concept of a twenty-four hour news cycle was still foreign, and most continued to get their news from nightly programs such as 60 Minutes, 20/20, and the local news. However, in 1991, a funny thing happened; when the United States invaded Iraq in the dawn of the Gulf War, CNN was the only news network able to communicate with viewers back home and provide footage of the conflict unfolding half a world away. It was a historic scoop, and for the first time ever, CNN was being played in millions of restaurants, businesses, and homes as Americans turned to the only news source capable of delivering to-the-minute updates on the war’s progression.Last night, another Middle Eastern development might have marked a coming-of-age for a different news channel. As Business Insider notes, Twitter provided hints that Osama Bin Laden had been killed and that the President would address the nation nearly half an hour before most mainstream news sources could officially confirm the information. Much of the information that powerhouse news stations such as MSNBC, Fox News, and, yes, even CNN, were conveying was derived purely from gossip and rumors received via social networks.
The snowball started rolling when Keith Urbahn, chief of staff to former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, tweeted at 10:24 EST that he had learned that Osama Bin Laden had been killed. Eight minutes later, a CBS producer tweeted that a House Intelligence aide had confirmed the report (interestingly enough, this tweet was made from a personal account and not from the official CBS News feed). Fox News was the first mainstream news outlet to tweet the information from an official account at 10:41 EST. You can view the entire timeline here, but what is interesting is that individuals, not branded news sources, informed many of what is potentially one of the biggest news stories of 2011.
The rabbit hole goes deeper. According to a Mashable poll (whose readership is, admittedly, probably more likely to use social media than the average U.S. citizen), 34% of respondents first heard about Osama’s death through Twitter, compared with 15% through television. Interestingly enough, television was not even second; the runner-up title belongs to Facebook, with 19% of respondents saying they heard of the news through the world’s most popular social network.
Additionally, in retrospect, it seems that one user actually liveblogged the event as it was happening without knowing it. Traditional news sources need cameras and microphones in order to report; Twitter is capable of receiving information from anyone, at any time.
While time will tell whether Osama’s death is the type of watershed moment for Twitter that the Gulf invasion was for CNN, Twitter has been showing signs of acting like a legitimate media source for a while, most notably during the uprisings in Iran. Twitter is even in the process of rebranding itself as a media and news content aggregator as opposed to a social networking tool. As audiences tire of the punditry and redundancy of traditional news channels, Twitter is quickly emerging as a “faster, more accurate, and more entertaining” news source.
This example does, however, speak to a pressing need for businesses to become involved in social channels such as Twitter By its very nature, news is quick-moving and conversational. As these conversations continue to shift from traditional media to online sources, it is imperative that businesses participate and join the discussion in order to engage both current and potential customers and create news rather than just react to it. Additionally, businesses must develop the skills necessary to target, filter, and create valuable content in order to break through the noise of social media.
How did you hear about Osama’s death? How often do you get your news from channels like Twitter or Facebook? How is your business benefiting from the modern word-of-mouth?
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